One Man's Festival
From IAN CAMERON
VENICE
That would be a dangerous way to run a festival even if the selection committee and jury weren't a pack of old squares. The outcome here is a festival that represents one very passé set of critical values. Of course, if the festival were moulded by tastes like my own, I'd think it was great. And I'd be wrong, for a major film festival, like Cannes or Venice, should cover as wide a commercial and artistic range as possible. This would provide a good view of the year's production rather than presenting a tiny selection which only those who choose it could imagine to be definitive.
Chiarini has removed Venice for now from the major league, leaving the field entirely to Cannes. The Italian press is hotly against him for being rosso. But even his redness is impugned by one weekly, Lo Specchio, which has dug up a picture of him wearing fascist uniform, jackboots and large smile in the company of /I Duce him- self. The rest of the press hasn't failed to remark that the standard of films was better in the old, commercial days. Chiarini triggered all this him- self by causing the withdrawal of official US participation (including the world premiere of My Fair Lady) when he let it be known that he thought the American entry, Lilith, wasn't up to scratch. The director, Robert Rossen, who made The Hustler, reacted in blind, and justifiable, fury, demanding the resignation of Chiarini, who reacted with characteristic tact by saying that given Rossen's remarks he regretted not having used his authority to reject the film.
Of the eight-elevenths of the competitors so far shown, one was Alain Jessua's La Vie a l'Envers, which I saw and liked in the Critics' Week at Cannes, and three were downright stinkers. Tonio Krbeger, from Thomas Mann, was expensively mounted but Germanically serious, Germanically dull and Germanically inelegant. Jean Delannoy's Les Amities Particu- lieres, in the soggiest tradition of old French cinema, with love affairs in a boarding school full of impossibly doe-eyed boys gazing intensely at each other and looking for all the world like wish-fulfilment for someone. The third stinker was to new British cinema what the Delannoy was to old French. Although it was welcomed by the press when it was shown in Britain, I must record a minority opinion, that, to me, it seemed to lack any redeeming feature— badly written and badly acted (particularly by Peter Finch and Lynn Redgrave), Girl with Green Eyes was above all badly directed with a silliness to match Tony Richardson at his execrable worst.
Slightly better was To Love, the second film of Jorn Donner, a not at all funny comedy about the way a young widow's love affair turns to marriage. In spite of intermittent insight it makes one of the half-dozen basic mistakes of bad movies: having the protagonists explain them- selves rather than reveal themselves. As in his first film (shown here last year) Donner has one great advantage in Harriet Andersson, whO performs with great charm and perceptiveness, even when the film hits a lumpish patch.
The independent movie which survived the official American walk-out, Nothing But a Man, was much in the same line as One Potato Two Potato, the independent American movie shown at Cannes : race relations as they affect personal relations, this time a Negro marriage. The best parts of the film, though, are those least con- cerned with racialism, which are between the oddly assorted couple, a schoolteacher and a rail- road labourer. In its exploration of their differing attitudes to racialism and the resulting conflicts, the film is a deal more honest than its predecessor, as well as being skilfully made and acted—Abbey Lincoln, a jazz singer who plays the wife, is most memorable in her first acting part.
In spite of everything, the festival still has its share of the big stuff : Godard, Losey and, more predictably, Bergman (the opening film which haven't yet seen), Antonioni and Pasolini. The idea of the latter, a Communist, doing The Gospel According to St. Matthew produced a demonstration outside the theatre by right-wing Venetian students. But Pasolini's petty criminals have always been treated as modern Christ figures. Accattone, son of Mamma Roma, Jesus— give or take a bit, it's all the same story. In his Rogopag episode, about the shooting of a cheaP religious spectacular, Pasolini codded popular Catholic art, and one almost expected him to play the Jesus/Apostles set-up as 100 per cent queer. But no, he plays it straight. As something of a Pasolini supporter in the past, I am most disappointed—this potted gospel has come out rather dull, with Jesus as a chatterbox who can't stop preaching to his disciples even when they're on the march. On the credit side, there is some fine speaking of Italian and an occasional good scene—a piece of political rhetoric against the Pharisees and a long series of selected sayings proclaimed to the audience in big close-up—but even sonic of the good bits are wrecked by an inept music track of selections ranging from Bach to Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky music and a Negro spiritual.
The only really fine film so far has been, hurrah, British: Joseph Losey's King and Country. A low-budget picture, shot in three weeks, it is adapted, distantly, from a plays Hamp, which was moderately reviewed at this year's Edinburgh Festival. It concerns the trial for desertion of a soldier who has almost involun- tarily walked away from the sound of the cannon at Passchendaele. Hamp's offence is only tech- nical, but the rules are such that it is necessary (and misguidedly expedient pour encourager leS autres) for him to be shot. The execution iS attended by the ghastliest of mishaps—HarnP, already drunk on rum, vomits up the communion wine. The firing squad succeeds only in wound- ing him and knocking over the chair into which he is strapped. The defending officer (Dirk Bogarde) has to finish him by pushing the muzzle of a revolver into his mouth and firing. The film is far from being just another protest, like Paths of Glory, against the inhumanity of war. It is that, and much more beside, dealing with Losey's frequent preoccupations—the
relationship of law to justice, duty to moralitY. It is inevitable that Hamp, an honest man who
cannot justly be condemned for his action, should die, while a dishonest man whose offence vv.as real might at most be imprisoned. Bogarde, again, is brilliant, while Toni Courtenay gives by far his best performance to date as Hamp.
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